In
the early seventies at least 20,000 of Britain’s Travellers
were living in trailers, their name for the motor-drawn modern
caravan. A typical caravan might be twenty-two feet long. There is
usually a small stove burning coal or wood. Cut-glass, silver
plates, family portraits and decorative china plates hang from the
walls. The windows are often fringed with decorative lace curtains.
The caravans are kept scrupulously clean.

Those
who are lucky have lorries to pull their caravans, lorries that they
often also use for scrap dealing.

Little
more than 120 of the sites which local authorities were required to
build as a result of the Caravan Sites Act 1968 had been so far
completed when this book was first published. There was room for
only a fraction of the Gypsy population on them.

So
far official sites had usually been notable for a remarkable
ignorance of the Gypsy way of life. And new ones were being created
very slowly. Since the Caravan Sites Act became law in 1970 the
provision of sites had not been much larger than the natural increase
of the Gypsy population.

The
caravans that were not on official sites were parked on private sites
or, illegally, on commons or roadside verges.

Prince
Nathaniel Petulengro Lee

‘My
birth certificate is on an oak tree somewhere in Spain’

Prince
Nathaniel Petulengro Lee lives in a trailer caravan parked in a
cul-de-sac in North London.

‘Do
you live alone?’ I asked.

We
were sitting on a couple of wooden chairs. Opposite us was his
caravan, beneath which lurked dogs. The Prince, a stocky man of
seventy, wore a scarlet bandolero on his head, and a gold crown
engraved with the words ‘The First Gypsy Prince’. On his
fingers were sovereign rings that had belonged to his parents, also a
wishing ring which, he told me, is in demand among Gorjios to wish
on. ‘These are all symbols, you see,’ he explained.
‘And when I die they’ll either be buried with me or
passed on to me sons.

‘As
you see I also wear bright beads and bright colours because we’re
a bright race, we don’t like anything drab.’

In
fact his trousers were of pink corduroy, he wore a scarlet silk
waistcoat and a sports jacket. His head was surrounded with a
blazing halo of white hair.

‘Yes,
I live alone,’ he replied to my question.

Beyond
the wall at the other side of the cul-de-sac a train hurtled by. We
were by the main line to Paddington Station and at intervals during
what followed, conversation became impossible as further trains
thundered by.

He
thrust one stocky arm down behind his chair and leaned in towards me.

There
came a taunting voice in the darkness, ‘Gypsy Lee! Gypsy Lee!
Gypsy Lee!’

‘Ugh,’
he muttered, and his lips formed a silent curse.

Beside
Mr Lee’s caravan there was a smaller caravan, and also the
motorised trailer that he uses for fortune-telling away from home.
This trailer says on the side in lettering that he did himself:

He
is Here

The
famous

Prince
Gypsy Lee,

Palmist,
Astrologist,

and
Clairvoyant.

As
seen on T.V.

Gypsy
Lee was just back from Nottingham where he had been engaged to put a
spell on the Festival, to ensure fine weather for five days. The
spell worked. Those five days were scorchers, despite the
counter-activities of an African witch-doctor.

‘In
one way, I’ve always been on my own,’ said Gypsy Lee.

‘I
was about seven years of age when our family was broken up. My Daddy
had taken some grais to a horse sale. He didn’t come back that
night. Next day a muskra came up to the varda.

‘He
was climbing up the steps and a dog went for him, tearing his
trousers. My Mammy called the dog off of him and then the muskra
said that my Daddy was in starry. He’d been given twelve
months because they said one of the horses had been stolen.

‘Them
times was hard. My mother had to support us with only her basket of
clothes pegs for sale, and her lace to sell to the Gorjios. Times
were hard because we were twelve chavvies to feed.

‘As
for me, I used to help out too. I used to go with my brother and me
father’s pony and trap, and collect watercress, mushrooms, and
other things to sell to the Gorjios.

‘My
sister, she sold violets, snowdrops, and primroses, and other wild
flowers. I used to sell the watercress. And many a time we was
chased by the muskras.

‘But
things still were hard and one night, as we was sitting round the
camp-fire waiting for our bit of grub, up come two gavvers and some
other Gorjios and they took us into what they call care; my brothers
was sent to a home for boys and my sisters to a home for girls, on
the grounds that my Mum couldn’t support us.

‘I
was about nine years aged at that time, I’d never lived in
anything else but a varda, never been with Gorjios or lived in a
house. So I found this children’s home irksome. Because I’d
always been like a bird before, free like a bird.

‘It
was a Catholic place, very religious. And I found it hard, ‘cos
I was nine years of age and never been away from the family before.
So me and me brother we planned to run away, but we never did it.
But we often planned it.

‘In
this place there was about forty of us sleeping in one room, and in
the morning we had to get up at six of the day. Then we would have
to stand by the beds while someone inspected the beds to make sure we
hadn’t wet the beds. And at this time also, there was prayers.

‘And
my young brother, he was uneasy there. He longed to be free, so he
felt uneasy, so he wet the bed. And he was made to stand in the
corner of the room while we others had our breakfast. He was made to
stand there with the wet sheet over his head.

‘And
all this praying which there had already been was before the main bit
of praying which was morning Mass. That was at seven-thirty of the
day and it was one hour.

‘There
was much marching about and much exercise in the course of the days.
And much lessons. We didn’t feel free as birds no more, my
son.

‘And
then one day as we was playing in the grounds I saw me father and
mother. And when there was no one looking they come up to me and
they told me they was come to kidnap me, to take me for always.

‘That
was a change to be back living the Romany way of life. Daddy had a
chavvies’ roundabout of twelve little wooden horses, and he put
me in charge of it. But it took me a while to get used to being in
the outside world again.

‘And
still, times were hard. In those days when I was a chavvy there was
no such thing as National Assistance, you see. Always there was the
fear that they’d send you to the workhouse. And in the
workhouse they’d give you so many loaves of bread, so much tea,
a pot of treacle and the boys were dished out with a pair of short
corduroy trousers and a jacket, a kind of uniform which was a stigma,
and people would say, “Oh, they’re living on the Parish.”

‘See,
it was like in the days of Oliver Twist, kind of thing, and it was a
stigma.

‘And
I’ve seen my Mammy going round scrubbing public house steps in
the winter when she couldn’t get a bob or two, and she’d
scrub the public house steps and the windows.

‘Every
country has its persecutions. Hitler persecuted the Jews and the
Gypsies, America persecutes the Negroes. And in England, I’m
sorry to say, they still persecute our people. Whereas our people
could be an asset to them. We could pay our rates and our taxes if
you give us a camping place, give the children a chance to be
educated, but no. You just treat us as scum.’

A
powerful train went rattling by the other side of the wall, shaking
Prince Gypsy Petulengro Lee’s varda.

The
Prince went into his varda and busied himself with making a cup of
tea. When he returned he said, ‘So now I will tell you how,
when I became a father, the same thing happened to me and I lost me
chavvies just as me father had done.

‘It
began with a dream. We were at Bethminster. And we had been hounded
all the way from Severn Bridge. We were dead tired. And I had a
dream. I dreamed that I was driving me caravan along a main road,
looking for a camping site. I was just entering a little village
when there was a terrible accident and suddenly there was blood
everywhere. I had this dream at five in the morning. I was so
alarmed that I went and woke my wife and told her about it.

‘I
said, “I’ve had this dreadful thought of a girl with
Technicolour hair and silver spurs and a golden jacket, and she’s
in a pile of blood.” And she was terrified that it might
fortell a disaster for one of our own chavvies.

‘A
few days later, the terrible dream came true. We were just entering
a village when a fifteen-year-old Gorjio girl riding a chestnut grai
came on to the road in front of me suddenly.

‘She
had beautiful black hair hanging down in ringlets, and she wore a
black velvet cap and a bright red riding habit with silver buttons,
riding boots and jodphurs. The pony reared. I swerved the trailer
to the right and slammed on the brakes. The girl tried to quieten
the pony but it became wilder. Then it bucked, and threw the girl on
to the ground.

‘I
was just getting out of my seat to go to her help when the caravan
was hit a great bump from behind. The lorry behind had been unable
to stop in time and it had pushed me over the body of the girl as she
lay there.

‘I
went to the back of the lorry and I saw the girl crushed beneath the
rear wheel of the lorry in a pool of blood, and the other lorry with
its engine driven right into the back of my caravan.

‘It
was a drunken man who was driving that lorry. He said he’d
been unable to stop because he had a floating load of twenty ton.

‘And
he went and rung up for his boss to come down in a big car. He said,
“Everything all right?” “Yes, everything under
control, governor.” So they brought in a case of accidental
death.

‘Well,
after that they had it in for me, you see. And some days after, they
kidnapped the chavvies. They thought: all right, the girl’s
lost her life. We can’t prove who did it but we have our
doubts, so we’ll take your kids, and that’s my opinion of
it.

‘And
after that time, things got increasingly harder for us all the time,
do you see. And my wife Elsie. She was in a state of shock from the
accident and in fact she gave birth to Daniel just three days
afterwards.

‘The
police towed us to a gravel pit in the New Forest and told us we must
stay there till after the inquest.

‘We
didn’t have much for food there, but I told a few fortunes, and
the children picked blackberries and wild flowers to sell to the
passing Gorjios. And our dog, Prince, caught a few rabbits.

‘There
came the inquest; verdict, accidental death. But from then on we
were persecuted because people believed I was responsible for the
girl’s death.

‘And
that was the start of my disasters.

‘I’d
had the caravan fixed, and the bumps knocked out and trailer-bar
mended from where the lorry had run into it.

‘We
pulled it down into Southampton and I found a bit of waste ground
there. I took my Nathan to the school but the gavvers come and told
us to move along. I said, “But I can’t move now. My boy
is in school.”

‘But
they made me go and fetch him from school and then they made us move
on to the road. So we moved off. And at the garage where we were
getting some petrol the man said, “Why don’t you park
over there, there’s going to be a fair there soon, why don’t
you park there?”

‘So
that struck me as a good idea and I pulled on to the ground that he’d
said, and I took the wheels off so they couldn’t tow us away.
I was hoping to earn a pound or two there for to feed the wife and
chavvies, with a bit of duckering, as we now were very short with all
the misfortunes we’d seen.

‘But
the police still wanted to get rid of us. They took to coming round
to the varda and I got so annoyed that I painted on it in foot-high
letters: “THE BIRDS OF THE AIR HAVE THEIR NESTS, THE FOXES HAVE
THEIR HOLES, BUT THE GYPSY AND HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN HAVE NOWHERE TO
LAY THEIR HEADS. WE ARE BRITISH REFUGEES, DISPLACED PERSONS.”

‘Perhaps
it was not wise to do that but I felt so chuffed.

‘And
next day the gavvers got more angry. They escorted us with two
police cars right out of the city and on the road to London. And at
that time I can tell you we had a loaf of bread, two bottles of milk,
eggs, a box of Quaker Oats, a pot of jam, and a pound of sugar. We
travelled all that day, it was twelve at night when we pulled into
Staines. We were all very tired and very hungry. I went across to a
house where there was a light on and asked for some water. But the
lady there said, “I’m not giving you water this time of
night. And I’ll see you’re not here long.”

‘That
was not a pleasant night. The new-born babe was sick, and we none of
us got much sleep. I was up early in the morning trying to get some
water for the chavvies, and I was walking up the lane to buy some
food and a big black car with two lady gavvers in it passed me. And
a sergeant and a policeman.

‘So
I didn’t know whether to go back or go on. But I knew the
chavvies were hungry so I decided to go on and get some grub although
we now were so short of money that I didn’t have much to spend.

‘But
I had hardly got to the shop when Madeleine, my eldest, came running
up behind me and she was shouting, “Daddy, Daddy, the muskras
jav chored de chavvies!” That is, “The police have
stolen the children.”

‘It
seems the police had got a summons for something I’d done that
had been passed on by the Southampton police. And when they got to
the varda they realised the kids were near starving, so they took
them away, or that’s what I think happened.

‘I’ll
tell you the ages the chavvies were when they were taken from me.
There was little Danny, he was only six weeks old when they took him
out of the missus’s arms out of the caravan at eight o’clock
in the morning. Then there was Beanie (our name for Albina), she was
only two years old, and there was also Lindra, she was seven year old
and there was Rodney, he was five year old. And then there was
Nathan, he was eleven year old, and Madeleine, she was thirteen.

‘So
I went along to the police station just as fast as I could go. And
I’d no sooner got inside but I heard the sound of chavvies
crying, screaming, and then a policewoman with a sheaf of papers in
her hand came out of the room.

‘I
stood in front of her and I said, “Where are the children? I
want my children.”

‘She
opened the door of another room and she said, “Go and sit in
there and wait. They’re upstairs, having some breakfast.”

‘I’d
not been in the room for more than five minutes when I heard the
sound of a car outside. I ran out quickly into the back yard of the
police station and at that moment saw my children being pushed into
the back of a Black Maria.

‘Then
I became very tearful and very hysterical when I saw my
eleven-year-old with the baby on his lap next to a policewoman, along
with the others, Lindra, Rodney, and Beanie.

‘Now
the wagon began to move and I made to go and throw myself in front of
it but the gavvers grabbed my arm and held me back while me children
were driven away.

‘Then
they took me back into the station and the sergeant put his hand on
my shoulder and he said, “Don’t worry, old man, you and
your wife have got to appear in the children’s court at
Brentford tomorrow, but it may only be temporary. You’ll
probably get them back.”

‘So
the next morning we got up early and we went to court and we were
told to sit on some benches and then they called out, “Mr and
Mrs Lee”, and we went into the court.

‘And
the policewoman said that the police had been told that there was a
Gypsy family on the green. They had got into the caravan and they
found the children in bed and the mother with a sick baby in her
arms. And that my wife had said that I had gone to look for a doctor
and buy some grub. She said that the children were dirty but they
looked in good health. And she went on to say that I was a good
father and that I looked after my children well.

‘And
the magistrate asked me had I anything to say, and I explained that
we’d broken down and been towed now from one place now another
from pillar to post, till we got to Staines, and I’d gone out
to buy some food for the children. The magistrates put their heads
together and started whispering to each other. Then the magistrate
says to me, “We can see that you have no money and no prospects
in the future of getting any, so therefore we’re going to take
the children into temporary care till such time as you can get
settled accommodation and can look after them.”

‘And
then I saw red. I cursed the magistrates in Romany and I cursed them
in English and I cursed the policewoman in English. I said, “You’ll
regret this to your dying day. This is my curse upon you. May you
never rear another child of your own as long as you live.”

‘At
that a policeman grabbed me by the arm and showed me out of the
court. And my wife followed. They gave us some forms to sign and
they said that they were for us to say that we would be prepared to
pay 2/10d each week for the children while they were in care. But I
upped and shouted, “I’ll be damned if I’ll pay.
You’ve kidnapped my kids and now you can bloody well support
them.”

‘At
that I ran down from the court to a room underneath where I found the
children and a birthday cake with six candles on it. And when the
children saw me they shouted, “Daddy, Daddy, take us home,
Daddy!”

‘I
threw my arms around Lindra and she threw her arms around me. I
wanted to seize her and take her home with me. But the policewoman
grabbed hold of my little girl and the two policemen grabbed hold of
me and that was that.

‘And
now I’m a very lonely man since I’ve lost me chavvies,
and I go to bed on many a night with an ache in my heart and a tear
in my eye, especially after I’ve had a day duckering in the
market when I’ve seen happy families and Mummies and Daddies
with their little chavvies. To get my chavvies back, that’s
all I live for, and then I’ll be a happy man before I die. For
now I’ve nothing to live for, me life is empty. They’ve
took me kids and me soul and me spirit. I loved them, I loved me
chavvies and therefore they’ve hurt me very much. Children
which is part of me spirit, part of me blood, they’ve put me
children in prison, children that were free and happy, and these are
sad days for me. There was a time when folks believed that Gypsies
used to steal children. That’s the way they said it was, but
the truth is, Gypsies have to be protected from the Gorjios who take
their chavvies away.

‘So
then I put a curse on this whole country and the curse has worked.
Britain has indeed gone to the dogs, everything’s inflation,
there have been strikes, money has lost its value and things have
gone from bad to worse. There’s been disasters on the rails,
disasters in the air, disasters on the sea.

‘Yes,
I had had a lovely wife at that time and a lovely life and six little
chavvies. But the time came they were taken from me as I had been
taken from me Mum and Dad. They were put away till the time we got a
house. Well, I got a house, but there was no bath in it, no toilet,
that was in the yard, and that was their excuse that I couldn’t
have them back and since I’ve been in London I’ve got me
name down on the list and I’ve found a tidy number of houses,
and they said the authorities would see that I got a house. “You
get your chavvies back with you and you can have a house.”
Then I went to the people who had the chavvies in care, and they
said, “Get the house and you can have the chavvies.”

‘So
after that it was a tug of war between the two, and the house people
said I’d got to have the chavvies, and the chavvy people said
I’d got to have the house, and meanwhile my chavvies have been
brought up as Gorjios, been brainwashed, they don’t know a bit
of Romany, they can’t rokra Romany, and they’ve been
exploited. They brainwashed my boy, especially.

‘And
when they took the chavvies, my wife was very very distressed. She
was so distressed she had to go to a mental institution. Because
when a bird loses its young, when a cat loses its kittens, such
animals go berserk.

‘And
now she’s living in Aldgate Street, living in shop doorways and
getting a shilling or two wherever she can, anywhere. Recently she’s
got a job working in a clothing factory for twelve shillings a day,
cleaning, and they call it temporary work. They pay twelve bob a day
and they make it up to a pound on the Friday. She doesn’t work
on a Saturday. She spends most of what she gets on the children.
She’s suffering from malnutrition and she’s almost
finished. Well, that’s what they have done to us. They’ve
come near to destroying her. They have accomplished what they set
out to do. So can you wonder why I, myself, is very bitter?

‘I
fought in Nazi Germany, I fought for this country against the
Germans, but I don’t think the Germans as they are now would do
such a thing, or the Russians would do such a thing. There is an old
saying, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and often I dream of
revenge. I’m not a vicious, vindictive man but what would you
do if they walked into your home and kidnapped your children and
took them off you?

‘Well,
in my opinion, they’ll be punished. I have put curses on many
of them. I’ve seen two or three go under already: a judge, a
solicitor, and one or two others that’s done bad things to me.

‘And
the story of violence didn’t stop there.

‘Because
now she hadn’t got the children, my wife became very
distressed.

‘And
one day, when I was coming back to my varda a little early, I found
her having intercourse with an Indian. I was deeply shocked but I
think it was because she was so unbalanced by what had occurred.

‘I
went a bit berserk, and I don’t know really what I did. But I
had some petrol with me that I was going to use to put in a man’s
lorry who was going to tow my varda for me.

‘And
with me striking her, suddenly the Tilley lamp burst into flames and
this caught the trailer and in a moment it was all on fire.

‘And
she was screaming to get out, I pulled her out through the caravan
window, but I pulled her on to a pile of milk bottles and they broke
and this harmed her so that now she was cut as well as scorched and
scarred. And they said later that I’d hit her on the head with
a piece of wood. That wood I’d been using that day to chop a
sheep’s head off with a knife and the bloodstains on it were
the bloodstains of the sheep’s head.

‘And
the police came, and they said, “Now we’ll see you go
down for a long, long time.”

‘And
I collapsed and I was taken to hospital.

‘And
of course the detectives magnified it. They had three or four
charges against me.

‘First
they said they were going to charge me with arson, that I was
deliberately trying to set me wagon afire. But why should I do that
since it wasn’t insured; it was the only hope I had since the
bus that I also lived in was now broken down through the accident.

‘I
woke up in a hospital bed. They dragged me out with the hair of me
head and out of me bed and they took me to court, they said, “Sign
this paper, you won’t have anything to worry about.” I
said, “I’m signing nothing and I’m doing nothing.”

‘And
they brought the Tilley lamp, they brought every bit of evidence they
could find and he blackened me, the detective blackened me, he said,
‘We’re going to send you down for a long, long time.”
They were true to their word, they sent me down for six years.

‘When
he gave me the sentence, the Justice asked me, “Have you got
anything to say?”

‘I
says, “Yes, your Worship. Before this sentence is expired
you’ll be dead and buried with your shoes on.”

‘And
he died a month to the very day on holiday in Switzerland.

‘Many
people suffered for the sentence that I was given for this passionate
crime. And not only them.

‘God
works in mysterious ways, if there is a God.

‘Of
course, my wife had her excuses. She told me she’d done it to
get money so she could have the children back. But I don’t
think that was the reason. I think she done it because she was
deranged.

‘And
so I done my time after these series of disasters. I’d been
given six years, but I was let out after four because of my good
conduct. I came out of prison with nothing and now I’ve got a
couple of thousand in the bank because the world of fortune-telling
is getting fashionable now. I’ve got money in the bank and all
I want now is a home for my chavvies, where we can be together.

‘I’m
saving up, I’m still saving up, till we can get a house where
we can be together. It has to be a house now because they’ve
been brought up as Gorjios, now they need to live as Gorjios. Until
the summertime come and we go out in the varda.

‘That’s
what I’m working for all the time. That’s what I’m
saving up for.

‘I’m
often an unhappy man still. When I see people at Christmas-time,
shopping, I get choked off to think of my kids fastened up in that
Home. Me and the wife went up there at the back end of March, at the
time of the little boy’s birthday, took him some toys; and we
caused him to come out of school, and he says, “Mammy, Mammy, I
can’t stop, can’t stop, I’ll get into trouble, I
must run back into school.” I’ve never seen a child so
frightened in my life. We asked to see the superintendent of this
Home.

‘We
had a row. And the upshot was, he barred me from going to see the
kids alone. And he took me to the Children’s Welfare Officer
and I had to sit there with a man present all the time that I was
talking to my kids.

‘Why
don’t they let me have my kids? It costs so much to keep them
in care. Whereas they could in the first case have given us a house.
It’s costing ten thousand pounds a year to keep these kids in
care. It’s costing you Gorjios all that money and has done
since 1961, that’s £100,000. All you ever had to do was
give us a house.’

I
asked Prince Petulengro Lee to speak in more general terms about
being a Gypsy. He said, ‘There’s a very big distinction
entirely between what the Gypsy wants out of life and what the Gorjio
wants out of life. You see, the Gorjios are trying to mould our
people into their way of life. And we’re rebellious against
it. They won’t let us hatch in the places we used to, and they
won’t give us a house.

‘I’d
like to have a house. I’d like to have a house so I can send
me chavvies to school during the winter months. I’d like to
have a house for that. But I’d be away in the varda as soon as
the blossom comes, and the thrush begins to sing, then I’d be
back again on the open road.

‘That
would be cushti, real cushti, because it’s got to be in Rome do
as Rome does, and it’s very difficult in the country to get a
living. So you have to live in a town and in winter have a house in
a town. In the town, in the city, the girls can peg their wares, the
artificial flowers they make, do a bit of duckering with the cards
for the Gorjio women, and the men could do a bit of tarmacking or a
bit of scrap dealing or anything where they could made an honest
pound or two. That’s why it’s useful to have a house for
a base in a town. But a Traveller must be on the road.

‘These
local authority sites that they’ve built, they’ve built
sixty such sites so far, but they’re not very good because
they’re only for a chosen few, and there’s not more than
say a dozen vardas allowed on any site. They have a licence for so
many and no more, and when a Gypsy gets a place on one of these
sites, he holds on to it because he knows how hard it is to get a
hatchintan anywhere.

‘Here,
for instance, where I am now, it’s impossible to get a place on
a site. There’s the Wormwood Scrubs fairground and they’re
fencing it in but they’re fencing it in to make a site not for
the Romany Travellers, they’re making it for the Gorjios that
come over from abroad for a holiday. And my idea is, you see, that
that will be coming to an end in September or October, and it’ll
be empty in the winter, so why not get the council to let it off to
our people? So that our people can hatch there through the winter
and fall away in the spring when the birds begin to sing and the
blossom comes out on the trees. And then, as the Romanies move out,
the tourists can move in and put up their little tents.

‘In
the olden days the Romanies could hatch up a cul-de-sac or a lane,
but you see the public health has made certain Acts that there must
be toilets and running water, for health reasons.

‘And
take it from me, you never see any Romany chavvy going into hospital
with any smallpox or chickenpox which the Gorjio chavvies pick up.
I’ve never seen the little Romany chavvies with lice in their
hair and nits and all that kind of thing because the Gypsy believes
that cleanliness is next to Godliness.

‘You
may think that, in this urban place, there are not many Gypsies
around here. But, actually, there are Travellers everywhere. I need
a tan for a start. As you see, I’m actually near the railway,
next to the gasworks, and it’s becoming obsolete very shortly,
this place where I am, and they’re pulling the gasometers down
here, so I’ll need a place. And there are quite a number of
Travellers round here, but mainly in houses.

‘And
out there on the Scrubs there’s about twenty acres. What are
they going to use them for? I’ve been here two-and-a-half
years but it isn’t ideal. We’re right against the
railway and until recently it was alive with rats. Of course now my
Alsatian jukels keep them down, but I need to be here because of the
market; it’s handy for the Portobello Market where I can dump
my duckering tan. I’ve got a hatchintan at this market where I
put my little motor caravan and I can do business with the Gorjios
and they simply love it, and of course it means that if I were to go
somewhere else I’ll have to start all over again and work up
another business. And it’s dispiriting to contemplate that
because I’d probably be only there a few weeks before being
moved on again. And Gorjios are not called on to move their homes
from their jobs. So why should Gypsies be?

‘There
are a few other Gypsies in this area. There are one or two settled
in caers and sold their wagons, but then it’s probable they’d
like to be back on the road.’

‘There
are various types of Gypsy. There’s the true-blooded Romany
Chal, the blackberry Gypsy. And there’s the Tinker, which is
from Ireland. And then there’s the Didecoi, which is very
rare, a Tinker girl marrying a Romany Chal, and you get the Pikie
which are Tinker and Romany mixed blood.*

‘I
myself am a true Romany Chal. I rocker the Romany language fluently,
I abide by the Gypsy laws and traditions, I live up to them, although
I’ve been tried to be made a slave to convention with the
Gorjios, it is very difficult sometimes.

‘My
mother was a true Romany rackley and my father was an Españolo
Gitano. My Mum was a cushti duckerer and her great grandmother was
burned as a witch.

‘And
me, like them, I’ve always, always made my living by duckering.

‘My
uncle was Petulengro who was famous for his duckering. So any
duckerer that has Petulengro blood, he makes the most of it.

‘Some
display their birth certificate. But when I was a boy, there was no
such thing as a Romany Chal having a birth certificate because our
birth certificate was carved on a tree. My birth certificate is on
an oak tree somewhere in Spain.

‘So
sometimes it is very difficult for my people when they become slaves
to environment, hatching in the city: “What’s your
child’s name? Where’s his birth certificate?” says
the law and the health inspectors … you can’t produce
the bloody oak tree, you see.

‘Duckering
hasn’t changed much. In the olden days it was the country
girls and the country boys but now you get the coloured people that’s
very superstitious, the Irish people, and they go to any means and
any end to see a good duckerer or palm reader time and time again.

‘For
instance, myself, I’ve told ‘em many a time how many
chavvies they have, how old they are, what sex they are. I’ve
told ‘em in a roundabout way about deaths I foresee –
like death on a motor-bike, for instance. But you mustn’t tell
them straight.

‘You
can’t learn to be a duckerer. It’s bred in you. It’s
handed down from father to son or mother to son and it runs in the
family. People have been amazed when I’ve told them that
they’re married and have got two chavvies and I tell them how
old the chavvies are, and what sex they are.

‘And
they say, “Someone’s been telling you about me.”
But nobody’s been telling me about them because it’s only
the first day, it’s the first day that I’ve pulled into
that fair.

‘So
they come back a week or so later and say, “So and so became of
what you told me, and I’m so impressed that I’d like to
have the cards now.” And I use the Tarot cards, the old
fortune-Tarot cards, belonging to me Granny, and then I use my
television that is about five hundred years old – that’s
what I call my crystal ball.

‘I
first learned about duckering when I used to sit under the table
while me Granny was duckering to the Gorjios, and I used to listen,
this was in the tent in the summer and the varda in the winter.

‘When
a person has their horoscope made by a Gypsy, they must give a date
and time and place where they were born. But some of these
newspapers, they give everyone born under Capricorn the same
horoscope, which is wrong. Because they don’t understand how
astrology was invented. It was invented by three wise men. Two were
shepherds and one was a Romany Chal. That’s why Gypsies have
always been so important in the world of duckering.

‘And
people have followed that Chal since then, and in the olden days they
used to say: Cross the Gypsy Chal’s palm with gold and he’d
look into the future. As a matter of fact my Mum had two little
parakeets in a cage on a brush pole and a little door to the bottom.
She wrote up the horoscopes herself with a pen and stuck ‘em in
a drawer and she put a little parakeet out on a little perch and just
by the flick of a finger she’d tell the parakeet which drawer
to open and the parakeet would take out a little card with the
person’s horoscope written on it and then she would ducker the
vass, that is, read the hand. People would play tricks on her; for
instance, women would swap rings to see if she could tell you whether
they were married or not, they were amazed when my mother told them
that they should be wearing the wedding ring and how many years
they’d been married and how many chavvies they’d got.

‘My
mother would say at the end of the duckering, “Do you love your
husband?”

‘”Oh
yes, I do.”

‘”You
don’t want to lose him, do you?”

‘”No.”

‘”Well,
put yer ring back on yer hand, missus, because that was put on for
better or worse, till death do you part, and you’ve not died
yet.”

‘So
the woman got frashed to death, she said, “Oh we only did it
for a bit of fun, Mrs Lee, to see if we could catch you out.”

‘So
my mother says, “You wouldn’t do that in the confession
box, would you, to catch out the priest? So don’t do it to
me.”

‘When
a woman comes to be duckered, it’s very confidential, it’s
like a person going to see a solicitor, or to the Citizens’Advice.
And my Mammy and myself have made many, many a person happy, and
have got many people together that’s been parted and mended
broken marriages.

‘Duckering
is as old as the hills because when they opened the Pyramids they
found slabs of marble with the impress of the hand on, before BC.
And it is now a recognised science. I mean I’ve been nicked
many a time, I’ve been fined forty pounds, fifty pounds, sixty
pounds, in years gone by; I was fined sixty pounds in Manchester and
I was fined fifty pounds at Blackpool; two lady police came in plain
clothes at Blackpool and one behind the curtain was writing down
everything I was telling her friend and she said, “We’re
here because you’re breaking the law because there’s an
old Act of 1864 that it is an offence to deceive Her Majesty’s
subjects.” But I explained to the court that people come to me
of their own free will, like they go to a solicitor. I never dragged
them in and said, “Would you like to come in and have your
fortune told?”

‘Anyway,
as far as I was concerned I wasn’t deceiving them. I was
telling them the truth. And it was their money that they were
spending, nobody else’s money.

‘Actually
I believe they’re not prosecuting under that law any more.
Because if they did they’d have to prosecute the newspaper
astrologers and all the large number of people who are now duckering
at every seaside, they’d have to pull in thousands of palmists
and astrologers on every fairground, at every seaside in the British
Isles and in the United Kingdom.

‘Duckering
is not just a profession, it is a way of life. The first time that I
duckered was like this: I got kicked with a grai when I was twelve
years old, and when I come into the hospital in good old Manchester
the nurses all made a fuss of me because I was a Gypsy, something
unusual, and they said, “Can you tell fortunes?” And I
told one or two for the nurses and they were very pleased. That was
the first time. Later, when I was put into the Children’s Home
in Liverpool, I spoke my first curse.

‘I
used to rob the orchard when I was hungry, and other naughty things,
and when it came for the day’s outing to Southport in the
wagonette (there were no charabancs in them days, four horses and a
wagon it was from Liverpool to Southport), and my name was called
out, there were so many bad marks against my name, that I was barred
from going to Southport. So I shouted, “It’ll rain,
it’ll rain, you’ll be sorry you ever went,” and as
soon as they got in the charabanc it started to rain at nine o’clock
in the morning and didn’t finish till eight o’clock that
night. And when they got back they were very angry. The boys formed
up in two ranks and I had to pass between them, and I was kicked and
punched till I was black and blue all over and they said, “That’s
for putting a curse on us and being in league with the devil.”
That was the first time I did a curse.’

‘All
through the ages there have been people who have been cursed, you
see. I mean, for example, Cain was cursed. I also have this power.
People sometimes have asked me, is it right to curse people? To
which I reply, is it right that a man should shoot another man that
he’s never seen in his life when there’s a war on? So
that’s my weapon, my reply. I do put spells on people. People
come to me and say, “Gypsy Lee, I’d like a baby boy.”
Then I’ve made a love charm and they’d have a baby boy,
and that’s why people have got faith in me.

‘Cursing
is the Gypsies’ defence, similar to the defence of the
porcupine which puts out its spikes to defend itself; but I would
never do a bad curse unless I’m driven to it.

‘Once
I was up at Herne Bay, working on the pier for the season, working
for the Council fifty-fifty. Then the season ended and I drew my
motor caravan and trailer to Norwich market where there was going to
be a fair at Christmas. We’d settled the caravans down and
there was a knock at the door late at night and the superintendent of
the fair and a sergeant and a couple of cops came and they said,
“Come on, get this thing out of here, the fair’s coming
in.”

‘I
said, “Look, I’m a travelling showman too, I’ll pay
for a pitch, please let me stay. I’ve five kids to feed and
I’ll pay you the same as the other people’s paying.”

‘”If
you’re not off by twelve o’clock tomorrow we’ll
have tractors to tow you off.”

‘I
said, “If you put tractors to tow me off, I’ll put a
curse on the fair because the fair is out on the cattle-market and
there’ll be no fair and there’ll be no cattle sold on the
market.”

‘So
they laughed at me.

‘So,
I sent my little boy to the slaughter-house, he bought a pig’s
head and a sheep’s head, a pig’s foot and a sheep’s
foot and a cow’s head, we got some cosh and made a little pile
of fire in the middle of the market.

‘And
it came to pass that I said certain things when the full moon was out
and put a cockerel and some blood on the fire and as sure as God’s
above, foot and mouth disease broke out next day and spread all over
Norfolk and true to me curse no cattle was sold for three months.

‘Then
we travelled on to King’s Lynn and at two o’clock in the
morning when the chavvies were in bed they brought a tractor. The
tractor towed us two mile out, towed us two mile outside the town
into a lay-by. Well, I got out the wagon, and fluffed out me long
hair and beard, I was fed up at that, and I cursed them. And I went
and got a water can and I hammered it full of holes, filled it full
of water and I made a curse that the town would be flooded for
fourteen days and nights and they’d have to take refuge in the
bedrooms with a ladder, and it happened.

‘It’s
some kind of gift, you see. Gypsy duckerers don’t believe,
like you Gorjios do, that you’ve got only a good spirit. We
believe everybody’s got an evil spirit and a good
spirit. If a person commits evil, commits murder, we believe that
the evil spirit provokes them to do that. And if a man commits a
good, the good spirit provokes him to do that good. That’s
what we believe. It’s in our own mind, we’re not taught
it like you’re taught about heaven and all this thing about
religion.

‘And
of course we believe in certain things what’s in our minds, you
see. Everybody’s spirit’s in the mind and you have the
actions controlled by your spirit and that’s why your Romany
Chal isn’t frightened to die, because we believe that this life
we’re living is a dream and that the real life starts when
we’re dead, when the spirit leaves the body.

‘Strange
to say, I have been dead so I know what I’m talking about.
You’ve first got to experience a thing before you can discuss
it. When I was in Tangiers, in Mr Brabazon’s orange grove, I
pitched my tent. This Arab was there and I’d seen his shadow
on my tent at one o’clock in the morning, this crouching
figure, and I’d seen a brown hand coming looking for my wallet,
so I just picked up a chopper which I kept lying beside me. I took
one blow and I chopped his fingers off. There was the hell of a
scream, he ripped the tent open and came staggering in and drove a
knife right into my stomach and embowelled me and I’m blessed
if I didn’t have to hold me hand over it all the way to
hospital. And I was on a table there.

‘The
doctor was giving me the kiss of life, and he told me later that I
had the heart of a lion, otherwise I would not have survived, for I’d
been dead for five minutes.

‘I
told a priest of my experience, and he said, “Promise me you
won’t breathe a word to anybody.”

‘I
said, “Look Father, I’ve been over the border. All my
ancestors were waiting, pulling my spirit towards them, and I came
back.”

‘He
said, “Don’t tell anyone about this.”

‘I
can tell you about death. Death was like a dream. I thought it was
a dream. You get people dreaming in black and white and some dream
in Technicolor. The one who dreams in Technicolor is psychic, and
also dies in Technicolor. When I died it was as if I dreamed -
beautiful flowers, beautiful trees, beautiful girls in different
coloured dresses.

‘Gypsies
don’t like anything dull or drab, even in death. At a Romany
funeral, for instance, there is singing and dancing and the corpse is
laid into a coffin; like me Granny was, put into an oak tree lined
with fern, laid to rest in a bright coloured frock with an ounce of
baccy and a pipe in one hand and a box of matches and a box of snuff
in the other. These things are to see her on her way.

‘We
think death should be the same as a wedding. It’s a great
thing. You go into a new experience, a new life. Why should people
wear black? I said to my father one day, I remember I was a chavvy,
I was only about seven year old, I’d seen about six coaches and
lovely black horses with plumage, prancing up with these people
crying in the carriage, and in front was a coffin and a glass hearse
full of flowers and wreaths, so I said to me Daddy, “Daddy,
what is them people crying for?”

‘”Look
my son,” he said, “in that box they put a sister or a
brother, and they’re crying because they can’t get up and
smell the flowers that’s around them. They send them flowers
when they’re dead, but they don’t send them flowers when
they’re alive. The only flowers that I’d like when I die
in cauliflowers, I can eat them. They don’t believe in having
happy funerals like we do.”

‘We
Gypsies believe that the Earth’s been polluted with the exhaust
and the oils of motor cars. And, you know how they can inflate a
balloon and send it up into the sky, and it’ll go up and up,
well, this world we’re living in is like a gas balloon. I’ve
heard me Mammy talk about it.

‘It’s
all gas in the middle of this Earth, like the gas inside a balloon.
They’re sucking the life blood out of this Earth, and my Mammy
said, “If you keep on doing it, by 1985 or 1990 this world will
have nothing to keep us in orbit. It’ll drop like a falling
star, because they’re pumping all the gas out of the Earth and
using it. What do you think keeps this world afloat in space? It’s
simply like a balloon and I’m forecasting this will happen.
The Earth will fall.”

‘You
know, I can see the day not far off when you can go to a telephone
kiosk and put a fifty pence piece in and you’ll see on the
screen the person you’re talking to.

‘And
I can see that this plane, known as the Concorde, in five years will
be obsolete, because if the Americans are building rockets to go to
the moon in a few hours, they will also be able to build a rocket
plane which will get you to America in five or ten minutes.

‘And
then they’ll have motor cars on the road that fold their wings
like a fly does and open their wings again and take off. People will
get into this car and go to the Isle of Man or anywhere in this motor
car. This is the premonitions I get.

‘My
Granny before she died she said, “My son,” she says, “I
won’t live to see it, but you’ll live to see men with
wings flying amongst the birds in the sky, you’ll see men
living amongst the fishes, you’ll see iron horses running on
rails, horseless carriages without horses on the roads and men will
talk to each other thousands of miles away and see each other
thousands of miles away, and they’ll land on the moon, and they
won’t be satisfied with that, they’ll want to go
further out and they’ll find other planets.”

‘I
can foresee a certain day, it could be around the year 2000, there’ll
be one house only left in London, and in that house there’ll be
a little nine-year-old girl and one woman. And the child will say to
the woman, “Mammy, can I go out and play?” And the woman
says, “But, my daughter, there’s nobody left to play,
there’s no more children left. Go on out.”

‘The
child goes out and she comes running back five minutes after saying,
“Mammy, Mammy, Mammy, I’ve seen a man!” “No,
a man?” Her mother is thrilled. Because that means that there
are one man and one woman and one child left in London after the
atomic bomb has dropped on it.

‘My
Mammy and my Granny was great people for predicting things and it’s
a kind of gift. We can’t understand it. My Granny and my
Mammy and my Daddy knew the exact day and date they’d die, and
I know I’ll live to be ninety, and I’ve been near to
death four times, and I’m still here. I’ve seen stronger
people than me go in the coffin, and I’m still here.

‘I
get a lot of complaints where I am though. It’s only a blank
wall at the back of these gardens as you see, but even so, I get
complaints. “We pay our rates and taxes” –
that sort of thing. “You’ve no right to be here.”
But we Gypsies take nothing from this society.

‘I’ve
been telling fortunes now, down the Portobello Market, for three
years. You see, it’s a wonderful gift, duckering, and I make
good use of it.

‘I’ve
got a good name and make a good living. I was in Dunkirk, but I get
no army pension, I get no old age pension. I give the government
nothing and I ask them for nothing, that’s the true Gypsy way
of life.

‘You
see, my son, what I make of this whole world is this: there’s a
law for the rich and a law for the poor. And one half of the world
doesn’t know how the other half lives and couldn’t care a
damn. But for one half, it’s nothing but persecution from
beginning to end.

‘And
I’d still like to have me children back with me, I still always
dream of this. I’d give me right hand to have me children back
with me, me son, me little chavvies back. At fresh of the morning
and at balance of the day I think of it.

‘God
grant that one day I shall see them chavvies live back here with me
again.’

When
I left him, Prince Petulengro returned to his upright chair and sat
there in the dusk till I was out of sight. He was the only Gypsy I
have ever met who lived alone.

Postscript: Prince Petulengro Lee
was a lonely man when I talked to him but that loneliness was to come
to an end. As a result of the publicity arising from the first
publication of this book, a former girlfriend recognised him and
contacted him through me. Unknown to him she had conceived and given
birth to a child of his. Petulengro and his former girlfriend got
married. Petulengro died in the 80s. His final days were spent in
true Gypsy fashion and were not spent alone.

Mr Tom Lee

‘All
they got is site mad now.’

Mr
Tom Lee, unable to find any stopping place in London, finally parked
his caravan outside the Houses of Parliament.

‘I want to raise the matter
with them, the governors,’ he informed a policeman.

The
policeman replied, ‘Are you aware where you are, sir?’

‘Well,
yes, mush,’ said Tom. ‘That clock over there looks to me
like Big Ben.’

‘Well,
you can’t stay here.’

‘Who
says I can’t stay here? I want to talk to the folk in there
about the shortage of sites for caravans.’

Tom
was eventually persuaded to park in King Charles Street, SW1.

He
received a visit from Lord Sandford, Under Secretary at the
Environment Ministry, but, though the situation had its bizarre side,
Mr Lee was anxious that this should not blind the public to the
seriousness of his mission.

‘We
Gypsies have been carrying on our wandering way of life as long as
the house-dwellers have,’ he said, ‘But just because
there’s less of us it is unkind of them to close the verges of
roads and our old stopping places to us.

‘It
is essential that we are given sites and stopping places close to the
centres of population where we are living our lives.

‘Most
Travellers live from scrap dealing. And yet central London is very
poorly represented for dealers. The Travellers find it hard to
travel that far.

‘I
call on the Queen or any owner of large public spaces to donate
stopping places for the Gypsies.’

On
another occasion, Mr Lee parked in an urban cul-de-sac. The local
authority disapproved of this but, rather than mount a full scale
eviction, decided on the unusual policy of fencing Mr Tom Lee in.
They erected a large iron bar across the road. Mr Lee drove his
lorry into it and crumpled it.

Next
time they put up the same again – in triplicate. Mr Lee
treated it in the same fashion.

Next,
a pair of twelve-foot-high steel gates was put up across the end of
the street in which the trailer of the resourceful Mr Lee was parked.
He borrowed an oxy-acetylene cutter and made himself a door. When I
called, the various fences and gates had been taken down and Mr Lee
was being left on his own.

‘I
do feel strongly,’ he says, ‘about the way Travellers
have been treated in Britain. In some ways I can see things from a
wider angle than other Travellers. One of the reasons is, when I was
a kid myself, me brother died on the road, me sister died on the road
and me mother died on the road and I’ve seen me father die on a
bomb site. Well when you’ve been through that, that makes you
think.

‘They
died on the side of the road, in wagons. Me brother died at
twenty-four from consumption, from damp and cold; me sister died of
consumption at eighteen years of age, me mother at forty-five. It’s
all from the same thing, dampness, wetness, rain, mud, pushing
vehicles about, see what I mean?

‘And
if we’re not careful, the kids will suffer the same way.
Looking back on it, I suppose, if we had been in a house, I’d
still have me family with me. So that’s one way of looking at
it.

‘Being
on the road may not be an important part of being a Traveller; but
it’s what you’re used to. You can’t say it’s
important, an important way of life, it’s just what you’re
brought up to.

‘The
majority of Travellers don’t want Government sites, they want
to be left alone and travel as they’ve always done. Once the
Government has set up the sites, in my opinion, the travelling way of
life is finished, because you’ll be told to go on to the
sites, and not be able to move about any more on the roads. And it
will just collapse. The travelling life will collapse, it will
become extinct.

‘I’m
filled with regret about these sites. It was Gorjios getting the
wrong end of the stick that were responsible, so I believe. The
Government put the idea up and the Gypsy Council took it up and now
it’s all got mixed up, they don’t know who’s doing
it. Know what I mean? See, some want sites, some don’t want
sites; as I say meself, personally, I don’t want no sites.

‘All
I wanted to stop really when I became an officer of the Gypsy Council
was this: to stop the aggravation of the councils and the police.
Nothing about sites whatsoever. I wanted to stop the police knocking
on your doors and moving you on. That’s all. Norman Dodds was
on about stopping aggravation, the councils, officials, police moving
you on. This was splendid. But then they moved on to the idea of
providing sites. We didn’t want sites. All we wanted was to
stop aggravation, people moving you from place to place. That’s
all.

‘And
all they got is site mad now. By building sites for us they’re
giving the council a licence to move the fifty or sixty other
Travellers what’s in the area, they’ll get licence to do
it, because they’ll have done their part of the Parliament Act.
This other sixty Travellers what’s in the area, they’ll
then have the proper authority to summons them and to nick ‘em
for camping unlawfully. It will be a licence, a glorified licence.

‘Already
it’s been happening. Take Barking. There’s about sixty
or seventy trailers round that area. Soon as Newham built a site at
Temple Mills, nearby Barking had the council along the week after and
nicked the others, for camping illegally on the side of the road.’

I
asked Tom Lee for his views on education, but he passed this question
to his wife, Margaret. ‘Gypsy children learn to speak quick,
they have to learn to fight back and that’s what does it. They
have to learn to think quick, and I think that if they were educated
they’d be far more intelligent than lots of Gorjio children,
because they’ve got that extra intelligence where they’ve
learned to fight for their way of life, learned to fight for
themselves and they’re quick-witted with it.

‘But
the only way that they could be educated would be during the winter
months, because otherwise you’d have to stay stationary.

‘I
think in the winter months, Travellers like to spend more time in one
place because of weather conditions, and also you can’t always
find another place to stop. So any time that the Traveller was in
one position for a long period, then obviously the children could
have education.

‘But
I don’t think a lot of the Gypsies want their children
educated. The Travelling boys do scrap iron, they don’t need
education. The girls grow up, they get married very young. They
bring up their children, they don’t need education. I mean
we’ve survived years without it, I’m sure we can survive
a bit longer.

‘Travellers
are not poor as a rule. Travellers in fact do quite well. The
reason for this is that we don’t have to pay out so much, I
suppose that’s what it is. We don’t get the chance to
pay out rates or tax.

‘I
think the way we’re treated is because so many people are
ignorant of us. They won’t get to know us. And if only they
would come to visit us and realise that we’re not bad people.
They’ve got some weird ideas that we’re different to
everybody else, but we’re not, we’re humans the same as
they are, you know. It’s just, you know, that we are a bit
dubious of some people because they take the micky out of us.
Calling us “Gyppos” and things like that. That can
hurt.’

The
Lees were just back from the International Gypsy Festival at Les
Saintes Maries de la Mer.

‘The
foreign Travellers,’ he said, ‘they’re a different
sort of people, I mean you can’t compare the Continental
Travellers to some Travellers in England. They’ve travelled
England, and that’s as far as they’ve been. Scotland,
Ireland and Wales, Doncaster, Lancaster, back to London –
that’s the extent of the travelling of some of them. They
can’t compare with Continental Travellers who travel the world.

‘Those
Travellers, they roam all over the world, and they don’t care.
There was music, music everywhere, everywhere guitars and lots of
gaiety. I’m not comparing them with some Travellers in this
country.’

‘Would
you like to live in a house?’

‘No.
When you’ve been in wagons for years and trailers for years,
being in a house is like being in a prison cell. And that’s
why when you get a Traveller in a cell in prison he can’t hold
himself together, don’t know what it’s all about.

‘Then
again, as regards living in a house, it depends on the neighbours;
you might get in a house and you might get good neighbours either
side of you, then again you might get some that resent you. There is
a lot of Travellers down the houses that later have come out of ‘em.
There’s Benny Webb, he come out; he come out, Harry Smith’s
come out.’

‘What
was it made them come back on the road?’

‘There’s
plenty of answers to that question. Often it is Travellers who have
got plenty of money. They return to the road, not because it’s
cheaper, but because they’ve had enough of houses and feel more
freer. But for others, it could be cheaper for ‘em. Some
people come out because it’s cheaper for ‘em to be on the
road. Not because they like that sort of life, you can’t go by
that. Not necessarily.’

Margaret
writes poetry. Here is a poem of hers.

The Gypsies

When
God made the Gypsies

He
said that they should roam,

There
would be no need for houses,

For
the world would be our home.

He
would give us the grass so green,

He
would give us the sky so blue,

He
would give us the evening sunset,

He
would give us the morning dew.

He
would give us a lot of laughter,

But
he would also give us pain,

For
every time the sun shines,

There
must always be the rain.

The
Gorjios may never love us,

As
long as we are in this land,

But
of one thing I am certain,

God
will always hold our hand.

And
so I say to you my friends

No
matter where you roam,

God
will keep his promise,

We
will always have a home.

A year or so after this Tom Lee’s
involvement with Gypsy rights took a step further when he became
General Secretary of the Romany Guild, a new organisation based on
the Folly Lane local authority site at Walthamstow.

Mrs Geraldine Price

‘A
Gypsy can see into the future.’

One
of the new local authority sites, very tidy. The toilets are all in
one block and each Traveller family has a key to a particular toilet.
High breasts of grass-covered slag-heaps overlook the entrance to
the site.

On
this site lives Mrs Geraldine Price.

Geraldine
is blonde, in her forties, with a serene and gentle smile. The
interior of her caravan is spotless.

‘I’ve
never met a ghost but I’ve seen – I’ve seen many
things. If ever I’ve got trouble coming, I get warned, I gets
warned by one of them what’s dead. This is the truth.

‘There’s
been a ghost come to me when me mother or me father or one of me
relations was gone and they’ve warned me. Comes to me in a
vision or a dream and I know about these things and I know there’s
another world. I know this ‘cos I’ve seed good from bad,
I’ve seed it when my mother was dying. I’ve seed a
vision of God upon the wall. His cross. This is true.

‘A
Gypsy can see into the future. A Gypsy feels these things, and they
know. I know. I know when there’s going to be trouble amongst
my family, or anyone’s going to be ill – I know. I get
the feeling of it. I get these feelings, what’s going to
happen. No matter how far they’re away. If they’re
taken ill I know about it.’

‘Do
you believe that the Traveller’s curse can be effective?’

‘Yes.
It can.’

‘Can
you tell me an example of that?’

‘...
I don’t know, you know what I mean.’

‘You
mean, you’d rather not say?’

‘It’s
things like this you can’t ...’

‘You
can’t speak of?’

‘You
can’t. You get people involved in things ... and sometimes if
I say a word it comes to pass.’

‘...
So you have to be careful what you say then?’

‘I
have to be careful. If I do say something, something like ...
something bad ... or something like that, then that sort of thing
could come to pass. It could come. It come.’

‘How
much do you pay for this site?’

‘Three
pound fifty a week.’

‘What
do you get for this?’

‘Oh,
we get a toilet, a dustbin and a slab to stand the caravan on. In
between the slabs there’s a lot of slack dirt. As you see, all
round the site there’s wire netting and barbed wire. And the
other side used to be the fairground, but now it’s closed,
where all the Travellers used to stop on that all the winter through.
I don’t know why they’ve closed it up but they’ve
closed it up. There’s been no fair on there this year at all,
last year was the last time the fair was on it. And then it was only
a small fair.’

‘Are
you allowed to keep pets, animals?’

‘We’re
allowed to keep pets but no horses, there’s no room for ‘em.
We’re allowed to keep dogs, yes.’

‘Are
you allowed to have a fire?’

‘No,
we can’t have a fire outside like we’d like to.’

‘Can
you keep any scrap?’

‘No.
We can’t have scrap, but they’ve promised us a little
bit of land in time, but it’ll mean more rent. At the moment
there’s no place for scrap.

‘They’ve
promised that later on they’ll do a little bit at a time. Over
there there’s going to be a washhouse and a shower. And all
those trailers at the top are fixed up with electricity.’

‘Who
collects the rent?’

‘He’s
a rent agent.’

‘Is
there a warden here?’

‘Yes.
He’s a Gypsy.’

‘And
what’s his job?’

‘If
anybody was coming on he’s meant to fill a form in and get it
to the council, or if there’s one going he’s to report it
to the council.’

‘Do
you like it here? Or would you like to have the old days back?’

‘I’d
love it to go back like it used to be. I’d love to see places
where a person could pull on and pay a week’s rent. If there
was a place in every town or two places in every town, you can go and
pay a week’s rent if you wanted to and pull off somewhere else
when you wanted to, when you got sick. That’s what I’d
like to see. More like the old days. You know, because there’s
a lot of people goes tarmacking and to do that they must have
somewhere to keep their equipment and on these sites they can’t
keep their equipment so there’s no more living for them. Well,
I say if it was back like it used to be you could have a few weeks
here and a few weeks there, you know, and if you pull on a farm and
you give a few shillings he could put your horses in and you’d
have no trouble then, when you’re settled down in the country
hop-picking, pea-picking, plum-picking, and it was lovely. All the
Travellers used to get together , you know. I think they was lovely
days ‘cos you find no Traveller wants to be tied down.

‘You
have to fill in a form to go from here to somewhere else. Well I
call that ‘striction. And there’s a lot of Travellers
don’t want ‘striction. All that ‘stricktion’s
no good. You got to let a person live their own life. Not too much
interference.’

Mr Jim Riley

‘A
Mumpley, he understands nothing. He’s ignorant to it.’

Jim
Riley lives with his wife and family in a trailer caravan in
Shropshire and neighbouring counties. We’ve been told he’s
parked in a deserted Air Force camp on the outskirts of Bridgnorth.
This must once have been a vast camp housing thousands of troops.
Now, rank grass grows up; there are the foundations of scattered huts
and the occasional remains of brick buildings, the camp cinema and
the NAAFI, sticking up like rotten teeth.

No
Travellers here.

We
continue, and after ten minutes’ more driving arrive at the
grass verge of a little lane off the main road. A Traveller’s
varda is drawn up here.

‘Have
you seen Jim Riley?’

The
Traveller says, ‘I haven’t seen him but I know where he
is.’

He
tells us how to get to the location, just off the Ledbury Road
outside Hereford; he wouldn’t have told me if I were alone but
he does tell me because I’m with Phillip Donnellan, a man he
knows and trusts. So we drive on to the farm, wondering at that bush
telegraph which enables Travellers, wherever they may be, to let each
other know where they are.

At
the farm there is a wide field stretching away. At the end of it ten
caravans are drawn up neatly in front of a long hedge; a dog lies
tethered near to the first caravan. There is a little green square
tent with a pointed top, and hanging fringed edges to its roof. The
sun is shining bland across the bright green grass. Some Travellers
are eating mushrooms that are boiling over the fire in a vast iron
pot.

Jim
is a fine-looking man in his thirties, with the easy dignity of one
of nature’s gentlemen. He is wearing a dark suit and a trilby
hat. His wife, Carol, is beautiful.

‘The
lorry is respected now more than the horse. When I was a single
fellow I used to have quite a few horses around me, not a big lot,
say three or four, but very high-class stuff, so I could always say,
“Well I’ll sell that cob there for sixty or seventy
quid.” But I can name you quite a lot of these blokes who are
rich today and had nowhere near the horseflesh I had, and now today
they are rich. And these same blokes they won’t stop to talk
to you today; but when I had horses many of them used to come to me
and they’d try to get a horse off me, you know, try to rob me
of a deal when they had nothing. Well, today they’re up in the
air and I’m still the same way, in the same position. They
won’t entertain me now.

‘And
I’m still gone on horses. I’m very fond of them still.
Me heart is in a horse. I love to see horses. Not riding stuff, I
like to see working horses. If I see an old working cob, I try me
best to buy him but I’ve never succeeded in quite a long time.
I do love horses and mostly I do love breaking them in. I give an
extra five pounds for one horse unbroken, you know, one real wild
horse that’s never saw a bloke, I don’t believe, two or
three times, some ones that never saw a road, a hard road, never saw
a motor, that’s my type, that’s what I like. It’s
my hobby to break them in. I love the fun you know of flagging it
out and then getting it to work, you know, to let it know who’s
boss. I should like to have a job at that; but my kind of
breaking-in would be no good for these riders. You see I break
working stuff in. I take a day or so, but these riding stuff folks
they aim to take two or three months. Well, one riding bloke I
talked to, he was breaking it in in three months; I could have broken
it in in a couple of hours.

‘I
am sorry in a way that I left the horses, but in another way, all our
blokes they’ve all got motor-cars and you know it sort of puts
one out if one’s only got a horse. It seems to make out like,
you know, he’s got bugger-all and he knows bugger-all: he
hasn’t got the knowledge to run a vehicle. I wouldn’t
mind going back to horses but still I should still keep a small
vehicle.

‘In
the old days a bloke would be doing a bit of shoeing his pony before
he went. And if he went out and got himself a bag of rags and an old
mangle he was quite satisfied; get himself a quid or thirty shillings
and he was quite comfortable.

‘But
now the Gypsies want more.’

‘We’re
not Gypsies, you see. We are not a Gypsy, not as you know us as
Gypsies. We are Romanies, what they call Romany Travellers. You
see, the Gypsies originated from India, they come over from India.
Like that is our right great ancestors, right back, you see. They
come over and we’re what they call the new population of the
Gypsies. But by law we’re British and we’re born and
bred in England. And we’ve took the life up from our people
before us. We’re true Romany Travellers, you see. Well
there’s the lad now come here today. He come here last night,
if you remember, he’s what you call a Mumpley Traveller. He’s
not what you’d call true-blooded Traveller, he’s half and
half.

‘I
can name you eight or nine different sorts of the different sorts of
Traveller.

‘A
Mumpley, he understands nothing. He’s ignorant to it. He
hasn’t got the knowledge to go out and do a day’s work or
to do a job of work; that’s what they call a Mumpley.

‘A
Hedgecrawler, that is what we call a tramp Gypsy. He’s too
idle to wash himself. All that he wants is a fire, to lay around a
fire, to eat and drink and smoke; that’s what they call a
Hedgecrawler.

‘An
old Didecoi, that there is a true travelling bloke. He can turn his
hand to anything. I do believe there’s not a job on the face
of the sun that I couldn’t do, I’d have a try; I’ve
done quite a few jobs in my time. I am a Didecoi.

‘They’re
trying to make us sites now, but there’s a disadvantage to
this. They only want us to go on there and stop there permanently
and then they only want on the site a certain amount of us. Well,
say now if me mother now is coming here tomorrow. Well if I went on
that camping site and they only wanted a certain amount, say there
was only me allowed on, you see me mother wouldn’t be able to
come on where I was. We wants a site where anybody can come on.
We’d like an open site free to go, free to come and go when we
like, come when we like, and as many as we like.

‘Travellers
keep in contact by meeting each other. When we meet each other, it’s
like a telegram from each one to each.

‘It’s
like that bloke I met in Leominster today, Denis Smith. I had a chat
with him. He asked me where was me mother-in-law staying; I told
him. And he told me where such and such a person was; if I wanted to
go out, I should just get in the wagon and drive straight to them.
We always meet someone and every day we hear fresh. A bloke was here
last night who told us all about his brothers and his uncles, what
fresh things they’d got. That’s the way it goes from one
to another.

‘When
we had horse wagons we used to leave signals. That were when
somebody were coming on behind us and he didn’t know the road.
But you see now when you’ve got a motor-vehicle, no sooner than
a minute and you’ve gone out of sight. The signals we used to
always lay would be a clod of grass or a clod of dirt. If we were
going to go on to such a place, well we’d put two clods; if we
were turning to the left, we’d put three clods. Say if we
wasn’t sure of what’s coming behind that might sweep it
away we’d put four or five clods. We’d put some this
side of the road and some up farther so he could see. We’d
always leave him plenty of track, plenty of markers which way we’d
turned off and, you see, he’d know then how long we stood there
for; he’d just look where the grass had been stood and he could
always tell by the horses’ hoof marks how long we’d stood
there by the horses trampling about.

‘But
now with the motor-vehicles, no sooner you walk on with the vehicle,
give me half an hour like, you could be forty or fifty miles away in
the caravan. It’s impossible. Give me an hour’s start
with a car, no one couldn’t tell. But with horse wagons we
could always tell. Say a horse-drawn wagon went from here and I come
here say two or three hours later, I could partly tell to half an
hour what time he left here by the fire. I’d just rake the
ashes and feel the ashes in me hand. If the ashes was warm I’d
say he’d be gone for two to three hours. If the ashes were
still alight I’d say he’d be gone half an hour. You see
we could partly tell; we used to go in the road, and rub our hand in
the road across the road you know where the hoof marks have been, and
if the hoof marks were on your hand he hadn’t long gone, you
see, because the track rubs them off.

‘I
don’t know a lot of Romany, we don’t speak it now between
one another. We used to, years ago, we used all that sort of talk
between one another but it isn’t today, not like they used to
years ago. They don’t teach the little ones like they used to.
I’ve got a sister, she won’t entertain our kind of talk,
if you know what I mean. She says, “Everybody’s looking
at you, you’re talking in Romany, everybody’s looking at
you, you ought to talk out in English so that I can understand you.”
She’ll walk away from me she will, she won’t listen to
me if I’m in a town and I say “Joller” like, you
know, “Joll” to me, she won’t look at me, she’ll
keep walking on, she won’t bother with me.

‘Travellers
are superstitious. I wouldn’t move on a Friday even if I had a
summons, without I’d moved the caravan on a Thursday. If I
hadn’t moved all through the week I wouldn’t have him
took up on Friday not for all the money in the world. You know I’ve
got that belief that it’s bad luck would follow it.

‘A
bird going in the caravan would worry me to death. If it’s
gone in there I get sort of upset; I believe in something going to go
wrong if a bird goes in the van.

‘If
me eye itches, say, which probably yours would do sometimes, I’d
say, “Oh, before the week’s out I’m going to cry,”
and I usually do – it’s funny, isn’t it?

‘If
me eye jumps I say I’m going to see a stranger.

‘I
don’t believe in fortune telling though. I don’t believe
in that sort of thing because I think what’s on its way you’ll
have and that’s it, ain’t it? I mean some people have
got that side. Me mother-in-law’s a very good one at it. What
she says is true, you see, but I’m not one for it.’

‘When
cooking I don’t hardly use any Calor gas, I don’t bother
with it. I don’t like gas lights. The weather must be very
bad before I use the gas. I mean, when you’ve got to make a
fire to fry and cook outside it’s very cold and very bad in the
snow. But we’re used to cooking outside, we don’t find
it a hardship because we’ve been bred to it.

‘Your
oven-cooked food doesn’t taste the same. I’d rather fry
a piece of bacon, roast a piece of bacon with a stick through it than
go in that caravan and light that gas; you get the fume of the gas on
to it and it doesn’t taste the same.

‘We
eat a lot of hedgehogs. I’ve had millions and thousands and I
shall eat more before I die too. Their fat is a good thing for a
bald-headed person, and Carol puts their fat on her hair. You get a
hedgehog, open him out, peg him out, stick him in the fire, chuck
some salt on him, give him a good wash first, soak him overnight in
some salted water, and then give him a good wash again; just peg him
out with a stick like a pig, you know, like you’re carcassing a
pig; and put him there to cook.

‘A
lot of travelling people, now, they use saucepans. Well, I don’t
believe in the saucepan. We cook in a pot, and we have a pot there
now, you know, which you can’t get for love nor money the type
of pot we use.

‘It’s
one of those cast-iron pots, but mostly now, you see, they uses all
aluminium saucepans, but we always use the iron pan on the fire.
Never believe in those little saucepan things, you see.

‘I
generally cut a stick out of the hedge, stick a piece of bacon on it,
and stick it over the fire; or just chuck a piece of steak straight
on the fire. It tastes beautiful. But they don’t believe in
that now, that’s dirty to a lot of the travelling people. They
say, “Oh, I couldn’t be bothered with them dirty pots,”
and they’ll have them crumbled, they’ll have their little
cast-iron pots crumbled, you see, but they’re still using the
pot but they don’t know it, because when it was crumbled it
went to make one of the small kind.

‘When
I’m totting, I never go to one particular place; in my line of
business you haven’t got to be fussy. Of course you’ve
got to go, like, where you think you can get something, like, you
know. But of course it doesn’t happen all the time like that.
You may go a day, you may go two, you may go a week. I always have
been in this line. I do other jobs in between like farm work, farm
labourer, painting, decorator. I never saw a job yet I couldn’t
do or try to do. But all me majority is scrap, I’ve always
been on it. I know a good many folk don’t like it. But it’s
what you take to. I used to do a lot of car dealing once, old scrap
cars. But I’ve gone off that now; too much hard work.

‘However,
it’s a trade that’s dying out fast, scrap; every year
it’s getting worser. It’s getting harder to get, there’s
a lot of modern stuff coming, a lot of plastic taking over. One time
of day you’d see all these landings, fettering, water tubing;
now it’s all plastic. Same as on the drainpipes they had,
well, they’ve done away with all the scrap for that. It’s
the plastic that’s taking all over now. But as years goes on
it will be harder to get but the price will be better.

‘I
picked the trade off me parents, that sort of thing. We was reared
to it. We used to go around with me parents, and of course you hear
them talk and you hear them chat. You pick it up. But each one of
us has got a different way of going around; each one have got a
different saying.

‘Being
moved on, we always have been moved, but it’s been worser since
we’ve had the vehicles than when we had the horses, ‘cos
you had an excuse with a horse, but with these lorries you haven’t.
When you have a horse-drawn vehicle after hours, you see, the police
knows very well that you could not travel. You could easy say, “Well
this horse has come a long way and it’s worn out. I’ve
got to stop twenty-four hours,” and, see, that’s where we
got the vantage of them.

‘I
remember one time, we’d been moved on all hours. A knock’s
come on the door at dusk in the morning, about seven o’clock in
the morning when it’s been snowing and freezing bitter; and
we’ve had to move straight away. We’ve got the little
girl up without any breakfast, we’ve had no cup of tea ourself.
We’ve just had to back the vehicle on and move. We’ve
been stuck in the road skidding, spinning, you know.

‘And,
of course, I’m a bloke that quick gets upset with any
Government bloke. I’ve been in trouble many a time. Carol
always had to correct me. We’ve had the council come to move
us off, we’ve left half our equipment behind, couldn’t
find it in the snow, and that’s how they get us. It hurts us
in the winter.

‘We
don’t mind in the summer so much. If anyone comes now and say
I’d have to go now, I’d say, “Well I’ll go in
the morning.” But when it’s bad we don’t like it,
when it’s cold.

‘Just
around here they know me.

‘Back
in the winter I pulled that caravan in the road there, I’d no
time to get off the road but a police car was behind me.

‘So
I’d got to get off the road, I pulled in the side, he said I’d
got to shift. I told him to come out the way, to move his mini-van.
I told him to move it or else I was going to move it for him, I was
going to pull over.

‘So
he said, “You’ve got to go.”

‘So
I said, “I don’t think so, it’s getting late,”
I said, “and I’ve had no tea and my little girl’s
very hungry,” I said. “She wants to get ready for bed.”

‘It
come to a bit of an argument so I pulled over.

‘He
said, “You won’t go?”

‘”No.”
I said.

‘So
I was here for a week after.

‘He
come again, I told him to get off, and we was here for seven weeks,
wasn’t it? We was here after for seven weeks. It was the snow
that kept us here.

‘So
he come again, didn’t he?

‘I
said, “When the roads is clear.” I said, “When the
roads is clear, I’ll get that caravan on the road, and the
wagon, I’ll go, but not before.” But they never bothered
us after.’

‘This
is a good life, I mean I wouldn’t change it, I’ve had the
offer to settle down. Mind you I like settling down in the winter
and I likes to move off then as I please.

‘I
like to be free. I like to be me own boss. When I’m on this
job I can take orders and I can give orders. I just like to be me
own free boss; do what I like, go when I like, come back when I like.
So long as I just get a bit of living I’m quite happy. I
ain’t a rich bloke and never will be. But we can manage, me
and the missus and the little girl; we’re quite happy.

‘Sometimes
you touch, sometimes you don’t, you see. That’s how it
runs. There’s an old lady she’s got some old copper
geysers. I tried to buy them Tuesday but I failed to buy them. They
told me to call back, it was still no good, got to wait again.
That’s how you get it, you see, up and down, up and down. To
know which is the good, which is the bad.

‘I
live a lot decenter than some of these housewives. I goes around
some of these houses – oh Christ – they ain’t fit
for a dog to live in. Well my caravan it’s fitting for the
Queen to come and live in.

‘I’ll
admit some of us goes about dirty looking, but our bodies is always
clean. We are free from any vermin or anything like that and we’re
very healthy. And it’s very rare you see us travelling folk
ill unless it’s a natural illness like, but everything else
we’re very fit.

‘I
reckon it’s a very rude word, Gypsy. I don’t mind
anybody calling me a Gypsy if I can’t hear it. But if I’m
in company or out in a pub having a drink and anyone calls me a
Gypsy, I go ashamed.

‘But
I’d never live in a house. I think if I lived in a house it
would be no good to me ‘cos it’s too close, I like the
open air, that’s what I like about it. And I think if I went
in a house I wouldn’t stay there a minute. I’ve had
chances to go in but I couldn’t.

‘Instead
I’ve travelled all over the world: Scotland, London,
everywhere, Ireland. But now we’ve ended up here, and there it
is, we’re hop-picking you know.

‘I
don’t want to be on a permanent site. If I was on a permanent
site, with a trailer it’s just the same as a house. I like
travelling. I like a month in one place but after that I like to go
again, I get sick of the same place. That’s why I don’t
like it. I wouldn’t like to settle down.

‘Of
course you’ve got to think about the children, haven’t
you, schooling and that. I think I will settle down in a caravan for
a bit when me daughter gets older, about three or four months in one
place if I can, but not to settle really, you know, all the time.

‘It
is boring sometimes for me; I’d love to read and write. If I’d
have knowed how I’d love to have gone to school. Me mother and
father could read and write but not me. Me Grandma reared me up
like, and she was a real Gypsy, you know, she used to travel about.
But she didn’t believe in sending babies to school, you know.

‘I’ve
never voted. We’ve been asked scores of times to vote, but we
never believe in it. I mean it’s no good the likes of one of
us going in to try and vote ‘cos we can’t. We’re
no scholars, I mean, we can’t read or write. There’s
very few of us scholars.

‘And,
I mean, it would be no good we going in and voting for one company,
one lot of Government, if it was Labour, Liberal, whatever it was, we
shouldn’t understand it, you see. There’s nobody for the
Travellers.’

Mr
Johnny Sheridan

‘It’s
harder for a Traveller to be inside than a Gorjio.’

A
derelict waste in the industrial Midlands. Twenty caravans scattered
as if washed up on a shore from which the tide has departed. A
winding canal at one side of the area, marshy land below it.
Caravans, lorries, dismembered cars, washing hung on makeshift poles,
piles of tree branches for burning.

Two
Gypsy girls pass, carrying a dustbin between them. They dump it in a
ditch, then depart. A man sitting outside a caravan sorting out
metals. A few open fires burning. In the depths of the canal old
iron lies rusting. Beyond it a huge factory with shunting chugging
noises coming from it, smoke pouring out of its chimneys. Two
Travellers are approaching with a pram along the canal bank. The
pram falls over. They right it and continue towards me. A girl is
scooping up water from the canal in a plastic bowl. Two Travellers
are peering into the canal perhaps to see if any fish lurk in it.

A
man at the local school has told me, ‘The land that the Gypsies
camp on is derelict, an unsightly land, it’s been derelict for
ages and it shouldn’t have been allowed to be so. This is
exploited country. It’s fucked-up. It’s the most
fucked-up countryside in the world.’

There
are hundreds of Gypsies in the area. This Gypsy stopping place is
one of many similar to it. Towards the back of the caravans stopped
here stands the caravan of Mr John Sheridan. John’s living
comes mainly from laying tarmacadam drives for Gorjios.

He
is a broadly built man in his twenties, wearing a grey shirt with
rainbow-coloured slashes let into its sides. He invites me in and we
get talking. As we speak he snatches the cigarette from his wife’s
hand, just as she is about to smoke it. ‘Don’t do that,’
she cries. But I can see that it is a gentle teasing way that they
have of expressing the relationship between them. He asks me if I’d
like tea and says to her, ‘Fill the kettle.’

The
pretty rakkli says, ‘Go and do it yourself.’

A
fierce row develops. At length a friend says, ‘All right, I’ll
do it, to settle the problem,’ and goes out to fill the kettle.
They are full of these rivalries, and in them seem to express
something loving and compassionate to each other. He addresses his
wife as ‘little ’un’ or sometimes ‘short
‘un’.

As
we are talking, she listens, saucy-eyed, her bright eyes rimmed with
black mascara, and tosses her blonde hair, opening her mouth to look
into its pink interior in one of the mirrors that line the caravan.

Later
we go out for a drink and as we drive in his lorry, she’s
constantly watchful, warning him when he’s likely to run into
something, warning him, ‘There’s a car there coming,
Johnny ...’

I
ask him, ‘Would you like your children to grow up as
Travellers?’

‘Oh
yes, it’s a life that you was brought up to, we do it the whole
time, you know. We’d never settle down in a house.’

‘What’s
the longest you’ve ever stopped your caravan in one spot?’

‘The
longest was twelve months. In Wolverhampton. One trouble is getting
hold of water. We’ve been refused from garages and been
refused from houses. We’ve had to drive miles and miles to get
water. Some places they’ll charge us five shillings a churn
for water, see what I mean, different places. Some garages will give
you water if you put petrol in first, then they’ll probably
oblige you. Sometimes they won’t give it to you.’

‘Every
time we go, we hear, “The police have told us and warned us not
to give any water.” The police is doing all this. The police
is telling the people in the houses not to give us water. Why the
police is doing this, I don’t know. And the police warns them
all. When you go to buy in a shop you have to show your money and
they’re watching you all the time. I can’t understand
these policemen.’

The
other Travellers are buying them drinks because a relative of theirs
has lost a child. Rums and pints of bitter are being handed around
in great numbers.

‘Are
you with John?’ they’re asking me. ‘Here’s a
drink for you.’

There’s
talk that they’re all going to pull out in the morning to go up
to the funeral.

Johnny
is a popular man. A member of a tightly knit extended family that,
left to itself, would always, so you’d think, support him.
They were not left to themselves. Johnny Sheridan was falsely
accused, falsely imprisoned, humiliated, suffered alone in prison the
pain of learning that his family were destitute, tried to kill
himself by swallowing razor blades; was given cotton wool to eat and,
in solitary confinement, given the ‘freeze’ treatment.
When six months of hell were over and he was finally released, the
recompense he was given was negligible.

None
of this would have happened, so I believe, if he were not a Gypsy.
As it was, his lot was injustice. He had professional friends and he
was lucky in this. If he had not, like many another Gypsy, he might
be falsely in prison still.

What
happened was that on the evening of Friday 14th February 1969, two
policemen in a police car ‘keeping observation’ on a van
parked by the road, saw two men come round the rear of some buildings
carrying a gas boiler and some piping. The men put these things into
the van. The boiler and piping had been taken from a derelict
building. Their scrap value was about £5.

The
policemen drove up in their car and got out to question the men. One
of them ran away and was chased by PC Brown. The other man was
arrested.

Two
days later the two policemen, with a sergeant, went to a stopping
place of the Gypsies and they were talking to the first man who was
now out on bail. Johnny Sheridan went past. He was immediately
claimed by the two policemen to be the man who had run away.

And
so Johnny Sheridan was arrested and the sergeant told him that the
two policemen identified him as the second man concerned in the theft
of metal. Johnny replied that he didn’t deal in metal.

Later,
at the police station, an ignition key was claimed to have been
‘found’ on him which fitted the lock of the rear door of
the van. Sheridan couldn’t understand how this key had come to
be in his pocket. He was charged and he then said, ‘Honest to
God, it wasn’t me, sir. I never deal in metal, sir.’

Johnny
explained it like this, ‘I told the police, “You’ve
got the wrong bloke.” I knew they had me for the wrong bloke.
So I told them about this, they wouldn’t listen. “Oh,”
they said, “you’re the fellow, you’ll do for him.”

‘They
already had the man they arrested there, he told the police, “What
you brought him in for, you’ve got the wrong bloke there.”

‘They
said, “Oh, never mind about that, he’ll do, we’ll
accuse him of the same thing.”

‘So
they had me a week on remand. I had witnesses where I was at the
time of the theft. I had six witnesses altogether. They wouldn’t
listen to me. Two policemen swore blind I was the man. That was it.
They took my coat, shoes and tie off me and left me in a cell.
About an hour later three policemen came in. One of them said,
“These officers recognise you in connection with the larceny of
some metal.”

‘I
said, “Are you rightly sure what you’re talking about?
You’re making a very big mistake here. You must have me for
someone else. You want to get your eyes seen to. You must be going
blind.”

‘One
of them said, “You’ll do well enough for now.”

‘And
they went out.

‘Half
an hour later they gave me back my shoes and brought me upstairs to
the CID. They started questioning me about this stuff and I told
them that I knew nothing at all about it, I was innocent. I said,
“There are more blokes at that camp similar to me. You want to
go back there and make sure.” They wouldn’t listen to
me.

‘They
had some tea brought in and tried to sweeten me up. They said,
“Plead guilty and you’ll be out of court in the morning.”

‘I
said, “I’m not stupid or daft. I’m innocent. I
know nothing at all about it.”

‘Then
they took me back to the cell and locked me up.’

Johnny’s
alibi was not believed. In court the man who had been arrested
pleaded guilty to the theft of this almost worthless scrap from a
derelict building, and the jury appeared to believe Johnny was the
man who had been with him.

‘It’s
harder for a Traveller to be inside than a Gorjio. Gorjios have
friends inside but a Traveller can’t get outside to where his
friends are. I think it’s twice as hard for a Traveller to be
inside any time. Well, a Traveller, like, he hasn’t got things
he can read and write, like the Gorjios. I couldn’t write, you
know, to the wife. And this makes you feel very lonely.

‘It
is lonely especially when a Traveller’s been free all his life
and is put within four walls, it’s miserable. This was the
first time I’ve been inside four walls. I’ve never lived
in a house before, and it was very bad. Enough to drive you mad to
be quite honest.

‘There’s
another difficulty: the Traveller likes to be his own boss. Whereas
in prison everybody’s bossing you around. I mean you’re
locked up all the time. You have to do what you’re told, and
if you don’t do what you’re told, it’s bread and
water, you know.’

The
solicitors representing Johnny, and Johnny’s relations,
continued to reiterate his claim that he was falsely in gaol.

And
they took a statement from the arrested man saying that it wasn’t
Johnny who was with him.

‘They
transferred me from Shrewsbury to Walton prison in Liverpool. Then I
felt terrible. Very sad. So I swallowed a packet of razor blades.

‘They
gave me some cotton wool and some porridge to eat. Then they locked
me in a cell alone, stripped naked with just one blanket on me for
three days. That was what they did when I ... tried to kill myself
... They gave me this cotton wool to eat and stuff, you know, to get
the blades out. They had me there for two weeks. They they had me
back to Shrewsbury.

‘Soon
after that the court case come up.

‘The
way I felt that when I went to prison if they just turned round to
get a gun to shoot me it would have been better. I’d sooner be
dead than be in there. It was just like a nightmare.’

One
day, in a very battered state, his face covered with blood, the man
who was really guilty appeared in the office of Ivan Geffen, Johnny’s
solicitor. Looking out of the window, Mr Geffen saw a crowd of
members of Johnny’s family standing outside. Mr Purcell
described the incident and said that he was the second man who had
taken the metal, and who had run away and it wasn’t Johnny
Sheridan, who had nothing whatever to do with it.

Mr
Geffen urged him to go to the police, and he did. A detective
sergeant made this report, ‘With regard to the statement made,
I have discussed it with PC Brown and the facts mentioned in it
appear to be unusually accurate. The only mistake made is in saying
that the tall policeman, PC Denant, went after him when in fact it
was Brown. The description of the ground over which this took place
is remarkably accurate.’

There
were more delays, lasting for months, and then, at last, the police
decided to charge the right man and he finally appeared before the
Justice. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced.

During
all this time Johnny Sheridan had remained, an innocent man, in gaol.
The police now claimed that there was a third man at the place of
the crime. No one had ever suggested this before. Perhaps Johnny
was this third man, said the police.

There
were further delays. Finally Johnny’s case came up for appeal.
And the police still maintained that he was guilty.

The
man who ran the appeal, Lord Justice Phillimore, denounced them all:

‘Today,
when Sheridan’s appeal comes before this court, we have Counsel
for the prosecution saying that he is instructed to help the court,
but in fact maintaining that Sheridan was properly convicted.

‘This
court thinks that this attitude on the part of the prosecution is
utterly wrong. And we think that a proper attitude on the part of
those responsible for the prosecution should have been able to
recognise this months ago and to have been anxious that this matter
should have been put right and that any question of injustice should
have been avoided. Not a bit. That is not what has happened ...

‘Mistakes
are inevitably made from time to time, but when it is appreciated
that there is a risk of a mistake being made then every attempt
should be made to put it right, not to preserve the error. That’s
what has happened here.

‘This
court is quite satisfied that this conviction is, to say the least,
unsafe and unsatisfactory and this man ought to be released
immediately,’

‘What
did you think the first day you got out of prison?’

‘I
thought I was in a different world. I thought I was walking on air.
I just couldn’t believe it.

‘My
trailer was in a different place, had been moved on the whole time.
While I was in prison the wife had to pay £2 each time to get
the caravan moved on. And all me tools I go to work with, those had
all gone. She had to sell them. She had to sell a £500
caravan for £50. The day of the court, my wife went to court,
so I’d know where to come back to the caravan. I had no money.
Me money was all spent. I’d nothing. They give me money to
go to the Assistance, but we never got to draw any. We never go to
the Assistance. We like to fend for ourselves.’

Though
Mr Sheridan was now at last set free, no effort had been made to
compensate him for his six months inside.

Extract
from a letter from his solicitor, Ivan E Geffen, to the Secretary of
State, dated 28 November 1969:

‘...
I have been asked to approach you for compensation for Mr Sheridan
for the loss of his liberty. In this context I draw to your
attention the fact that the actual offender, when he appeared at
Aldridge Magistrates Court on October 13th, was sentenced to a small
monetary fine and costs totalling together less than £26.
While the innocent Mr Sheridan’s records are different. The
discrepancy between the punishment imposed on the two men is
startling.’

Nothing
seems to have come of this letter, or of another, or of a third.

Extract
from a letter from Mr Geffen, this time to the Home Secretary:

‘...
My client is a working man, who was deprived of his liberty for over
six months, as a result of a wrongful conviction at Stafford Quarter
Sessions, a confession signed by the actual wrongdoer was forwarded
to the Registrar of the Court of Appeal (Criminal Division). Despite
this, bail was refused to my client, pending the hearing of his
appeal and when the matter actually came before the Court of Appeal,
the prosecution were sharply censored by the court for the attitude
it had taken.

‘While
he was in custody, my client not merely suffered the loss of his
liberty; he was also very much upset by the hardship endured by his
family. Mrs Sheridan is unable to read or write, and instead of
receiving help from the offices of the Ministry of Health and Social
Security, she was sent from one to another and throughout the period
of her husband’s imprisonment she was able once only to obtain
any assistance. This amounted to £6.

‘To
put it bluntly, the treatment of this man has been scandalous, and I
trust that you will now intervene personally to ensure that something
is done to right the wrong done to him and his family.’

Finally,
after yet another letter, it was agreed that Johnny should be paid.
But the sum offered, £750, was in fact less than he would have
earned if he’d stayed at liberty. There was no recompense for
the indignities he’d suffered or for his loss of liberty; or
for the fact that his wife had had to sell most of his possessions
for a pittance.

Extract
from a letter from Mr Geffen to the Home Secretary, 30 December 1970:

‘I
have seen my client today. His financial position is such that
although the amount which you offer represents the exercise of power
over right, he has no alternative but to accept the sum of £750.’

Johnny
blames some of all this on the fact that he is not literate.

‘It
helps to be a scholar, it helps to be a scholar very much.’

I
blame it on the fact that he is a Gypsy and that justice in the
traditional British sense is not yet available for Gypsies.

*
Other Travellers have slightly different meanings for these words,
and their usage seems to change according to what part of the land
one is in. Also, Romany should correctly be spelt Romani: I
preferred to keep the better-known spelling in this and some other
Romany words.

49

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